Man gradually retreats before an expanding white shirt that detaches from the body and takes over the canvas. It starts as a familiar element worn by a person, then turns into a standalone mass, while its bearer shrinks until disappearing. On this visual movement, Lebanese-Greek artist Rhea Matta builds her solo exhibition 'Larger Than Us,' hosted by Maya Art Space gallery in downtown Beirut, curated by art curator Randa Sadaka.

In the exhibition, Matta presents her latest series 'Power,' through which she explores the nature of authority, its allure, and its ability to change the relationship between humans and the symbols they create. The idea settles on the white shirt, a garment associated in public consciousness with prestige, order, and professional and social status. From one painting to another, this familiar element becomes a symbol of power and an image of institutions that gain influence surpassing that of the people who founded them.

Not everything that swallows a person has a mouth (Maya Art Space)

The works do not rely on specific political figures or events to evoke power; rather, the artist builds it visually through the swelling of masses, changes in size, and the unbalanced relationship between body and shirt. The bigger this shirt grew, the more the body receded. And the more its forms repeated and accumulated, the more the individual lost his position in the composition. Rhea Matta moves away from embodying power in specific people or events, leaving it to the sizes, voids, and proportions within the painting to express it, as man retreats before the expanding shirt. Thus, the paintings reveal how the balance of the relationship between man and power shifts until power becomes an entity in itself.

The new version may slightly forget whom it was imitating (Maya Art Space)

The vast spaces with limited colors give way to the white shirt to dominate the scene. The contrast between white, gray, and black draws the eye to it, while rapid dark lines create a sense of instability, as if the forms are about to collapse or break free. In a painting flooded with red, the conflict between the stacked shirts and the surrounding void intensifies, while the boundaries between body and clothing, individual and group, recede. Repetition serves to build the idea within the exhibition. It creates a sense of a system that generates itself, replicates its image, and presses on what remains of the human imprint.

Things that do not look at us change us more than others (Maya Art Space)

Rhea Matta is preoccupied with identity, memory, and the forces that affect human life—themes also linked to her Lebanese and Greek background. In 'Larger Than Us,' she focuses on power and how it can change an individual's relationship with himself and others. As the presence of the symbol expands within the paintings, the individual's presence recedes, and his position, value, and image become more subject to a system he cannot control.

Bodies appear in several works fragmented or trapped within the folds of shirts. In other works, the human appears in a tiny size at the edge of the canvas, as if watching a huge construction he can no longer control. Matta does not need noisy scenes to talk about power. She places it before the eye as if it were a familiar part of life, seeming to have existed from the beginning, without a moment of entry or announcement of itself.

At the end of every story, something remains that does not know it survived (Maya Art Space)

The white shirt is open to multiple interpretations. It can be linked to management, work, and professional classes, or to the official image that grants its owner social legitimacy. It also carries an apparent cleanliness and discipline that do not stop at appearance. Through this contradiction, the works avoid presenting power as absolute evil or an ideal state. They reveal its allure first, then observe what it does to those who approach it.

Thus, the white shirt in Rhea Matta's works ceases to perform its usual function. It leaves the closet, the workplace, and even the body, to begin another biography... the biography of a trace that remains after the scene ends, retaining what passed before it, while faces change and disappear.